YAKKA OVERALLS PTY LTD FACTORY (FORMER)

Location

Heritage Overlay Number

Level of Significance

Included in Heritage Overlay

Statement of Significance

What is significant?The building at 2-6 Ballarat Street, Brunswick, is a modernist
factory comprising a sprawling sawtooth-roofed production building and
a double-storeyed office/showroom on Ballarat Street. The latter
presents a particularly striking facade, with a projecting
concrete-framed and fully-glazed upper storey and a sloping lower
level with tiled cladding, plain black columns and tinted paving.
Designed for Yakka Overalls Pty Ltd in 1955 by architects A K Lines,
Macfarlane & Marshall, the factory was subsequently occupied by
Fletcher Jones (1966-1982) and Perucci Shirts (1983-2008).

How is it significant?The factory is of historical, architectural and aesthetic
significance to the City of Moreland.

Why is it significant?Historically, the factory is significant for associations with a
succession of important Australian clothing manufacturers that have
become household names (AHC Criterion H.1). Built in 1955 for
Yakka Overalls Pty Ltd, it provides evidence of the post-war expansion
of an important local company after it had outgrown two earlier
premises in Brunswick. The building marks a significant phase in the
ongoing development of this company, which saw it move to even larger
premises in Broadmeadows in 1964 and to establish additional factories
in regional Victoria and New South Wales in the 1970s. In the same
way, the building's occupation by the Warrnambool-based firm of
Fletcher Jones demonstrates the expansion of that company's industrial
activity into the Melbourne metropolitan area due to the local
unavailability of skilled workers. With its subsequent occupation by
Perucci Shirts until very recently, the building has been continuously
occupied by the clothing manufacturers for more than fifty years. Once
cited as Brunswick's last remaining clothing factory, the building
thus demonstrates a significant sub-theme in the industrial history of
the municipality (AHC Criterion A.4).

Aesthetically, the building is significant for its Ballarat Street
frontage: a bold and striking modernist composition that is virtually
unaltered and thus remains highly evocative of the 1950s period
(AHC Criterion F.1). The projecting upper storey, with
expressed concrete frame and fully glazed window wall, is typical of
fine commercial and industrial design of the era, while the ground
floor, with its plain black columns, tinted concrete paving and inward
sloping wall being particularly distinctive elements. Overall, the
building exhibits a notable (and notably rare) level of physical
intactness, consequent to being continuously occupied for more than
fifty years by companies engaged in the same industry.

Description

The Perucci Shirt Factory is a large brick industrial building comprising a double-storey office/showroom block, fronting Ballarat Street, and a sprawling single-storey production building behind. The latter is utilitarian in its form and detailing. It has a sawtooth roof clad in corrugated cement sheeting, and a plain red brick facade to Ovens Street with large steel-framed window bays at its south end, a vehicle entry with steel roller shutter, and a elongated strip window with steel-framed hopper and fixed sashes.

The smart Ballarat Street frontage is articulated as three distinct components that express various functions within. The western half of the facade is realised in stark red brick, with a row of five small square windows at each level. These windows are enlivened by projecting surrounds of glazed brick in a contrasting pale green colour, and contain steel-framed pivot sashes. The eastern half of the facade is divided longitudinally into a projecting upper level and a receding lower level. The former is defined by a projecting concrete frame that encloses a fully-glazed wall with continuous bays of steel-framed full-height windows.

At ground level, there is a large vehicle entrance to the right side, with a steel roller shutter. The facade thence recesses inwards at a slight angle to form a narrow entry porch, with three plain black columns that support the underside of the floor above. The porch is paved with rectangular concrete slabs in a red and grey chequerboard pattern. The angled wall, clad with glazed white tiles, has large metal-framed shopfront windows with fixed panels of textured glazing. There are two entrances: one facing the street and a second set at a right angle at the eastern end of the porch. Each has a pair of glazed doors with stainless steel kickplates and metal handles of a distinctive trapezoidal form, all highly evocative of the1950s period.

The building has some wall-mounted sheet-metal signage on its south and north elevations, dating from the Perucci period (c.1983). These bear that company's name, in distinctive cursive script, with the Italian phrase 'per uomo' (ie 'for men'). One of the signs on the Ballarat Street facade includes the helpful descriptor: 'actual makers of craftsmen tailored shirts in the European tradition'.